The New York Times
The New York Times’ Farad Manjoo isn’t super impressed by Apple’s vision for the future of Siri. At its WWDC conference, this week, “The way Apple presented the changes, with each Siri advance positioned as a feature of one of Apple’s devices, left unclear what Apple’s ultimate aims were for the voice assistant,” Manjoo writes. To boot, “The new features fall short of remaking Siri into something fundamentally different from what it is today.
CNBC
Among other mobile innovations, Domino’s is testing a “zero click order” -- which would simply require customers to launch the Domino's app to order a pie -- and “on-time cooking.” With the use of a GPS tracker, the latter feature would prevent employees from making a customer’s order until he or she is in close proximity to their local store.
The Verge
Ahead of WWDC, The Verge considers what Apple is going to unveil at its big software conference, this week. “We have some idea of what’s to come,” it writes. “A lot of it has to do with Siri … like a lot this year, which should be interesting after months of bot and AI news from basically every major player in tech.” Meanwhile, “One year after launch, Apple Music is in store for its first revamp.”
Business Insider
London startup Blippar just unveiled the “Blipparsphere” -- a “visual browser” that uses machine learning to recognize real-world objects. “To use it, users fire up the iOS or Android Blippar app and point their smartphone camera at any object,” Business Insider reports. “The app then uses Blippar's ‘proprietary knowledge graph’ to analyze the object's characteristics and suggest what that it might be.”
TechCrunch
TechCrunch takes a look at Winnie a new app that helps parents find nearby kid-friendly places and events. “The idea is to make going out with your little ones less stressful, whether you’re just running errands around town or traveling to a new city,” it writes. “This sort of useful information for parents isn’t collected in a structured manner today.”
Wall Street Journal
Messaging-app maker Line is planning to raise more than $900 million in a big, globe-spanning IPO. Listing in Tokyo as well as New York, the offering would value the startup at more than $5 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports. “Owned by South Korean internet company Naver Corp., Line, with 218 million monthly active users, operates Japan’s most popular mobile messaging app.”
VentureBeat
Google just launched Motion Stills -- a new iOS app that stabilizes Live Photos so that they can be turned into shareable GIFs and video clips. “Google may well end up adding the technology into its other applications, like the Google Photos cloud-based photo storage app,” VentureBeat reports. “The app works offline, and you don’t need to sign in to any service in order to use it.”
The Next Web
Slack if officially rolling out voice calling, this week. “There’s nothing wrong with typing in direct message or channels, or even sending the occasional GIF when words fail you, but sometimes the direct approach is best,” The Next Web writes. “After ‘months of testing’ the feature dropped today for all Slack users, no matter where you use the platform (Web, desktop or mobile).”
Wall Street Journal
Verizon on Monday was expected to submit a second-round bid of about $3 billion for Yahoo’s core internet business, The Wall Street Journal reports. That’s a lot lower than Yahoo was expecting. As recently as April, Yahoo was reportedly holding out for between $4 billion and $8 billion.
Android Police
Google has quietly added an uninstall manager to the Play Store. “It works by suggesting a user uninstalls apps that have not been used for a while, because they're taking up space which could be used by other apps or games,” AndroidPolice reports. “It also displays how much space each unused app is using, and how much is needed for the thing that the user wants to install.”